Russia is not waging war in Ukraine’s east, and is not supplying rebels with military equipment, according to Russian deputy defense minister Anatoly Antonov. The anti-Kiev forces get their arms at old Soviet storages - same as government troops do.

“Surely, Russia doesn’t wage any war. Vladimir Putin’s policy
is aimed at not allowing the situation to develop according to
the worst-case scenario. There are, unfortunately, forces that
try to push two peoples against each other to start a real war
between Russia and Ukraine,” Antonov said, speaking with
journalists in Slovakia.

Addressing the claims that Russia supplies weapons to the eastern
Ukrainian self-defense forces, he explained where the militia may
get their weaponry from.

“First, one shouldn’t forget that Ukraine used to be a part
of the Soviet Union. There were many weapon storages on the
territory of the Soviet Union, so when Ukraine and Russia became
independent states, clearly some storages remained on Ukrainian
territory.

“Currently, in the region engulfed by this disaster, by the
bloodshed, where the “punishment” operation is being carried out
by Kiev against its own people, some of these storages have been
seized by the self-defense forces. That’s why saying that
Russians supplied the weapons to Lugansk and Donetsk is simply
incorrect. Look at the Ukrainian army’s weaponry. It’s fighting
with the Russian weapons – or, more precisely, with Soviet
weapons,” Antonov said.

Another source is operational trophies, the deputy defense
minister said. “The self-defense forces seize large amounts of
National Guard’s and the Ukrainian army’s weapons. Hundreds of
Ukrainian soldiers fled into Russia, leaving the weapons they
used to own,” he added.

The cost of the war - be it “anti-terrorist operation”
as Kiev puts it or a “military operation for protecting East
Ukraine civilians” as the rebel forces have it - comes at a cost.
To Russia, it is a stream of refugees, who “didn’t enter our
territory just to “visit their grannies”,” Antonov said.

More than 130,000 Ukrainians have asked for either refugee status
or temporary asylum in Russia since the conflict in the country’s
east started in April, according to the Federal Migration
Service, while some 820,000 Ukrainian citizens have moved to
Russia.

“Those who come to Russia need to be given medical aid,
provided with a job… There is no lighting, morgues and the sewage
doesn’t function, there is no water, the people choke because of
the unbelievable damage that the Kiev government has done. In
this situation, we couldn’t be uninvolved…” Antonov said.

If Moscow sends anything to Ukraine, it is supplies to civilians
caught up in turmoil as Ukraine’s east is plunging into a
humanitarian crisis. Cities in Donetsk have been without water
and electricity for weeks now, there are food shortages and it is
hard to leave the conflict zone.

“What do we send there? We send wheat, buckwheat, medical
supplies, mini electricity stations to ensure there is
electricity at least in hospitals… That’s what we send!”
Antonov stressed. “It was said that we would use those trucks
to carry out some military intervention. I would like to say
openly: it’s all nonsense. It was all counted: the number of
trucks which came to Lugansk exactly corresponded with the number
of those which returned to Russia, empty.”

Since April, almost 2,000 people, many of them civilians, have
been killed in the fighting. Over 130,000 people have been
declared internally displaced, according to the UN, while the
number of those who have fled into Russia is nearing a million,
according to the Russia’s government.